Question

I want to write a custom serializer for storing the session state into Azure Cache (Preview), so that means this custom serializer has to implement IDataCacheObjectSerializer (if I am wrong, please let me know). The reason why I need to write this custome serializer is i need to serialize some Linq objects which contain some System.Data.Linq.EntitySet attributes. And the default serializer NetDataContractSerializer cannot serialize the EntitySet.

My plan is to write a custom serializer by using DataContractSerializer (I searched some articles that mentioned DataContractSerializer can serialize EntitySet, so if I am wrong, let me know please), but the problem is how I can write a custom serializer that can support generic type.

Currently, my codes for custom serializer are like:

public class CustomSerializer : IDataCacheObjectSerializer
{
    public CustomSerializer()
    { }
    public object Deserialize(System.IO.Stream stream)
    {
        /* How can I know the type of object?????? */
        DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer("Type of object");
    }

    public void Serialize(System.IO.Stream stream, object value)
    {
        DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType());
        dcs.WriteObject(stream, value);
    }
}

By the way, I have changed the Linq Serialization Mode to “Unidirectional”

Answer 1

I did not work with IDataCacheObjectSerializer, but common solution looks like this:

public sealed class CustomSerializer<T> : IDataCacheObjectSerializer
{
    object IDataCacheObjectSerializer.Deserialize(System.IO.Stream stream)
    {       
        DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
        return dcs.ReadObject(stream);
    }

    void IDataCacheObjectSerializer.Serialize(System.IO.Stream stream, object value)
    {
        if (!(value is T)) 
        {
            throw new AgrumentException();
        }
        DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
        dcs.WriteObject(stream, value);
    }
}